


Artificially Sweetened Sodomy

by BrideofCrixus



Category: Sons of Anarchy, Sons of Anarchy RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:09:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28806354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus
Summary: Starts at the end of S1: Ep.13: I poach from the series as necessary but essentially after Jax and Tig fight and the witness is scared into oblivion, Tig is left alone with an aching jaw, bruised ego, and sore knuckles. As he’s having a momentary and foreign dip into the pool of self-pity, he hears the ATF agent start to come back to consciousness in the other room. All he knows is he needs to get away and she represents a way of escape and misdirection. I’m anxious to get Tig and the OC ATF to get to know each other and gloss over many of the characters, if not ignore. Lots of triggers from nearly every psychological aspect, I hope you enjoy, xoxo.
Relationships: ATF - Relationship, Alcohol - Relationship, Drugs - Relationship, Kidnapping - Relationship, Triggers galore - Relationship, death - Relationship, rape - Relationship, smoking - Relationship
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

Tig squeezed the bridge of his nose and groaned at the sharp pain radiating from the cracked cartilage.  


He forced himself to make a fist, his fingers swollen around his heavy rings.  


He struggled to his feet, cursing incoherently as he settled in the last upright dining room table chair.  


Tig sniffed hard and coughed, spitting out a glob of bloody phlegm before fishing a half-empty pack of cigarettes free.  


He held the acrid smoke trapped in his lungs before he leaned around and retrieved his fallen phone and dialed Clay who picked up before the second ring started.  


“Tig?”  


Tig remained silent as Clay repeated himself. “Tig are you there?”  


“Yeah, yeah,” Tig finally said and gave a sharp cough, certain he had a cracked rib or three when pain wracked his midsection.  


“Clay I gotta get the fuck out of here for a while, clear my head.”  


“This is always your home brother,” Clay finally murmured.  


After the line clicked dead, Tig stared down at the phone.  


As Tig spit another mouthful of blood on the shitty carpet, in the adjoining hallway, rookie ATF agent Kari Stillwater began to stir awake from the unconscious state Tig’s chokehold had forced her into before stripping her of her regulation matte black .40 caliber handgun.  


Kari’s first sense was the scratchy threadbare carpet under her cheek. Her stomach began to cramp as she replayed the moments before waking up on the floor. 

She strained her ears and couldn’t keep a groan from slipping past her lips as a stab of nausea twisted angrily in her gut.  


In the other room, Tig’s hand snapped up and he had a gun in hand moving towards the soft sounds.  


From the floor, Kari’s vision was blurry as she rolled her eyes up to see Tig’s face appear around the corner and the capacity of violence in his vivid blue eyes made her feel like she could piss herself on the spot.  


She fought a flinch as he stomped towards her, feeling an extra layer of fear at seeing the dangerous man pointing her own gun at the center of her face.  


Kari struggled to slowly sit up, she was careful to keep her hands in front of her and took a deep breath as the room began to tilt. She kept her hands extended as she sagged heavily against the wall while the armed man stared down at her, almost studying her.  


She coughed and found her mouth bone dry, accompanied by a scratchy throat as he observed her silently.  


“Where’s your wallet?” the blue-eyed madman finally asked, his tone empty and unreadable.  


“It’s in my inner jacket pocket,” Kari said with a dry cough, her neck aching.  


Tig nodded and closed the distance between them, his gun hand never wavering. “Don’t move,” he growled as he reached inside her silk-lined jacket, his fingertips brushing the bullet-proof vest hugging her body with the tightness of a lover.  


Kari grew as rigid as a majestic redwood tree as he stepped back from her and thumbed through her wallet, pulling her ID free of its plastic sleeve.  


“Kari Diana Stillwater,” Tig read from her glossy license and skimmed the details before looking up and capturing her eyes.  


He wordlessly held her gaze before flicking his eyes back to her DMV photo that had caught her frowning. He tossed the license to the floor before he shuffled through the rest of her wallet and added more cards to the floor after reading each of the raised plastic letters.  


“What are you looking for?” Kari finally asked.  


Tig ignored her as he examined her credit cards, grocery store reward cards and coffee punch cards. He pulled a faded picture of twin boys in blue baseball caps from the last plastic sleeve and held it out towards her.  


“Who are they?”  


Before Kari could answer, her phone chimed from her slack’s pocket, deafening in tone even from the confines of her tailored pants.  


Kari froze as she met the blue-eyed psycho’s gaze as she felt the phone vibrate in addition to ring.  


Despite the post-fighting body aches, Tig’s pituitary gland ejaculated a glut of adrenaline and he moved with inhuman ferocity and before she could begin to process, his hands were groping her midsection with the goal of taking her phone.  


The photo of the twin children fell to the floor as one of her hands shot out, curled into a tight fist, aimed squarely in the direction of his already damaged nose.  


Tig easily blocked her fist and brushed her arm to the side while letting his blocking hand slide down her forearm and capture her slim wrist.  


Kari tried to strike him with her other fist and he effortlessly grasped it, pinning them both above her head.  


As soon as she felt the scratchy carpet fibers under the back of her jacket, she began to kick her legs in an erratic rhythm. The movement freed her pointy-toed flats from her nyloned feet as he tightened his grip on her wrists.  


“Stop,” he demanded and roughly slammed her wrists to the floor.  


Kari’s breathing came harder and she could feel her pulse pounding in her temples.  


“No,” she managed between gasps as he lowered his face so close that their noses nearly touched. Kari could feel her eyes fill with tears as she continued to say no in a disjointed rhythm, each syllable spit between gasps.  


“No…no….no….no…no…” she continued to chant. Tig saw angry, frustrated tears pooling in eyes that were as diametrically opposite in their darkness as his were in vivid brightness.  


He transferred his grip on her wrists to one of his strong hands as he pawed at her slacks for her phone as it finished its second ring.  


Kari spit up at him when he held her ringing phone in front of her face, too close that her eyes nearly crossed as she tried to read the caller ID.  


“Who is it?” Tig asked shaking the phone in her phone.  


“Fuck you,” she screeched as she recognized a scheduled check-in.  


“Answer the phone and state everyone is okay, or I will drive to the address on your license and find and kill everyone you know.”  


Kari stared up at him unblinking throughout the third shrill ring, she tried to remember her training manual, but her roommate and three-month old infant were at home with the newest episode of A Dancing Human in a Glittery Costume.  


“Okay,” Kari finally hissed and Tig held the phone up to her ear.  


“Sir, twenty-one hundred hours, clear agent 7155,” Kari said to the operator on the other line.  


She lost her battle with keeping her tears contained as they rolled down her flushed cheeks in wet pathways as she signed her own death certificate. The next check-in wasn’t due until the following two hours and she didn’t know how far post-mortem she would be by that point.  


Tig’s lips pulled into a satisfied smile after he tossed her phone to the side. “That’s a good agent,” he growled as he pushed her sweaty hair off her flushed forehead.  


Kari tried to kick her legs out from under his weight and didn’t have the chance to offer a protest before he roughly flipped her over. Her disheveled clothing rode up and she could hear the grimy carpet fibers scratch at her Kevlar vest.  


Tig calmly wiped his face of her spit which had landed on his chin, the saliva clung to the dark shadow of hair on his angular jaw.  


“What are you driving?” Tig hissed as he flattened her to the floor with the bulk of his weight, forcing her air from her lungs.  


“What?” Kari managed as she renewed her struggling.  


“What kind of car is the ATF providing these days?” he groaned as he dug his hand into her low braid and slid his palm to cradle the back of her skull, tightening his hand into a fist in the silken strands.  


Kari cried out as he applied further pressure to her hair and yanked her head back until her neck was a taut line. Tig’s eyes found the pounding pulse of her carotid artery in the smooth skin of her throat.  


“A Yukon,” she shouted and nearly moaned in relief when he lessened his hold on her hair.  


“Where are the keys?”  


“In my left pants pocket,” she whispered and grew still as Tig slid his hand around the front of her hip to dip into her pocket.  


Tig shifted his weight to reach the bottom of her pocket and plucked the keys free. He let his palm stay on her hip and move in small circles as he adjusted his weight until he could mold himself closer to the curve of her bottom.  


“Where is it parked?” he growled as he slid his hands to the button closure of her designer slacks and fumbled at the navy-blue plastic disc.  


“Stop, it’s in front of the mailbox, just take it and go,” she said, hating the begging presence in her tone.  


“Get off me,” Kari shouted as Tig felt a dull ache fill his groin as he groaned against the back of her neck and tried to not lose himself in the feel of her body in his arms. He had to force himself to ignore the delicious feeling of pressing against her firm curves.  


“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he thought as he wrapped his forearm around her neck and squeezed until he could drag her back into an unyielding state and sagged underneath him.  


Tig took a few minutes to catch his breath before he moved off of her slack body. He rolled her over and lifted her unconscious form into his arms and took a quick look around before he left the safe house through the broken screen door and arranged her as carefully as he could into the rear of the bulky, black SUV.  


He muttered to himself as he slid an arm around her shoulders and adjusted her upright on the leather of the bench seat. His senses were overloaded from the warm scent of the skin he could see and smell as he fastened the seatbelt around her.  


He risked further exposure as he raced back to the safe house and shoved any visible guns, extra ammo and raided the cupboards before tossing the supplies on the floorboards next to her sheer stocking encased feet.  


Tig allowed himself to sweep a couple escaped strands from her low braid behind her ear before he traced the dark fringe of her eyelashes.  


“I didn’t plan for this,” Tig grumbled aloud to her beautifully unconscious face before he climbed behind the wheel of the sturdy vehicle and navigated the backroads, taking them both further from the known hub and recognizable intersections of their lives.


	2. Bloody Problems and Room-Temp water

Tig glanced up in the rearview mirror as Agent Kari Stillwater remained unconscious on the second-row seating before he dialed Clay. 

“You all right?” Clay asked as he answered.

“You’ll hear soon enough but the wit sec shit went sideways and I, I need a place that’s discreet anywhere off 80. We got any friends I can crash with?”

“Let me make a couple calls, Chibs has some family left in the area off 80.”

Tig ended the call and looked up as Agent Stillwater groaned and stirred in her unconscious state. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he thought as he felt overwhelmed by the weight and dangerous ramifications of what he had just done.

“Because you’ve never seen someone like her before,” he answered as he had to force himself to not stare in the rearview mirror at her and keep his eyes somewhat on the road.

“What were you thinking?” he asked himself.

“That you want her,” Tig grumbled as he inhaled sharply as the olfactory bulb in his brain raped his senses by making him remember the warmth and spicy vanilla aroma when he yanked her off her feet and cut off her air until she slumped in his arms.

He pinched the bridge of his nose as the tiny snail-shaped cochlea bone in his ear bombarded him by recalling her gasps and eventual breathless sighs as he had squeezed his forearm against her slim neck. 

The next hour was a fog for Tig, he kept looking up at Agent Stillwater’s slack expression. Clay called him back and gave him directions to a remote motel with a cash-only, week-to-week policy. Clay told him the name to check in under as well as the parking spot of an unregistered nondescript van.

Agent Kari Stillwater began to stir and groaned as she slowly began to regain consciousness. Her stomach began to cramp as she tried to recall the time she knew she lost. 

Kari strained her ears and heard the miles passing under the large tires and then a sudden, violent vision of blue eyes and being on the wrong end of her regulation handgun.

Tig took the next exit as soon as she began to wake and pulled the SUV over on a dirt road opposite a junkyard, encircled with rusty barbed wire. 

She forced herself to open her eyes. 

Kari’s vision was blurry as she found him staring at her, almost studying her. Her eyes found a different gun in his hand, aimed in her general direction and she had the fleeting thought as to where her .40 caliber was. 

She was awake enough to hate herself for flinching when his voice fell around her.

“There’s water in there,” Tig mumbled and pointed to a blue canvas bag by her feet.

Kari met the startling blue depths of her abductor’s eyes as he gestured again towards the bag with the barrel of the gun. 

She barely blinked and never broke eye contact with him as she reached down and fumbled for a bottle of tepid mineral water. 

Kari drank deeply and coughed harshly as the carbonation teased her dry throat. 

She caught her breath before resuming small sips from the bottle before letting her eyes fall closed again. His gaze was too assertive, his silence overwhelming and bloated with unknown motivations. 

He watched her patiently take a few more sips, taking in her pallid tone. 

“Are you okay?” Tig finally asked evenly.

Kari scoffed and shifted uncomfortably as he lapsed back into silence, clearly waiting for her to answer. 

She cleared her throat. “I don’t know. Am I?”

Tig’s expression never changed, “that’s all dependent on you Agent Stillwater.”

“I don’t have money,” Kari said on the tail of a ragged sigh. 

“I don’t want money,” Tig said without a trace of emotion, watching as color began to return to her face.

She sat up straighter on the plush seat and smoothed her hair down while her mind frantically reeled for a way out.

“What then?” Kari managed as a stronger wave of nausea rolled over her.

She blinked slowly as her abductor fixed his attention on her and spoke casually, his face plastered with an unreadable expression.

“Not sure yet.”

Kari’s fear was barely concealed as she pressed her lips together in a firm line as his words reverberated and seemed to hang in the air. “What exactly does that mean?” she asked in an almost steady voice.

“Not sure yet,” Tig repeated slowly, letting his eyes casually dance over every bit of her exposed skin. His gaze lingered on the gruesome bruising around her slim neck, hating the discoloration that seemed to darken with each passing second.

“Did you kill the witness?” she deflected, the weight of his gaze growing unnerving. 

Kari held her breath before the man with the shockingly black head of hair, sharp cheekbones and crystalline blue eyes shook his head. 

“I didn’t plan for this,” Tig said in a louder voice than he intended, his words too forceful.

“Then drop me off at the closest gas station or restaurant and I’ll find my way home, I don’t need to remember anything too specific,” Kari threw out, not a shred of actual hope behind her words.

Tig’s chuckle sent a shiver from the crown of her head to the tip of her tailbone. The sound was all masculine, early man and spoke to the ebb and flow of her hormones.

“You’re stuck with me for a while,” he rasped musically. 

His blue eyes seemed to darken as his lips pulled into a smile and she quickly looked down at her lap, suddenly and starkly thankful that he hadn’t restrained her with her own handcuffs.

Kari continued to stare at the tops of her hands as she spoke. “Where are you taking me?”

Tig shrugged noncommittally. “A place a few hours from here, off 80.”

“What’s this place?”

“Somewhere quiet.”

“Do you think the ATF doesn’t have a long reach?” she couldn’t help but ask on a scoff.

“They’re not here now are they Agent Stillwater?” Tig asked gravely and pulled back the hammer of the handgun.

Kari’s head snapped up and any color that had been returning to her face quickly evaporated.

Kari shook her head and tipped the last of the water into her mouth. 

The now warm water swirled around her tongue and she surprised Tig by whipping her face towards him and spitting the citrus flavored water at him.

He shook his head and gave a startled shout as Kari scrambled towards the door and pulled at the handle. 

Tig wiped the mixture of mineral water and spit out of his eyes before he climbed over the seat as she managed to push the door open before he caught her elbow. 

Kari grunted and tried to yank her arm free of his hold. 

“Stop goddammit,” he growled and captured her other arm before jerking her roughly back towards the bench seat and his solid embrace as he adjusted his hold on her. 

Kari snapped her head back and nearly made contact with his already cracked nose. Tig growled and easily slid one arm to wrap back around her throat.

“Stop fighting,” he warned and tensed his forearm against the soft skin of her neck. 

Kari froze, not wanting to be forced into unconsciousness again by near-asphyxiation.

Tig smiled approvingly as he relaxed his hold on her when she gave the barest of nods, letting his senses be water-boarded by the feel of her body and sweet smell of fear, anxiety and autumn leaves blossom and exude from her pores. 

He closed his eyes as he pressed his face to the warm curve of her neck. “Are you through fighting Agent Stillwater?” he murmured against her flushed skin.

Kari nodded again stiffly and let a modicum of tension leech from her body as he suddenly released her and slid to the other end of the second-row bench seat, settling back against the other side door.

Tig waited in tense silence, his red blood cells energized as he watched her slowly turn and face forward in the seat. He licked his lips as he watched her fold her hands in her lap before she looked over and met his eyes. 

He kept his expression neutral as he focused on the small cut that had opened on her upper lip from grappling with him. 

“When were you supposed to check in next?” he asked as he fished his nearly empty crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one free.

Kari glanced at the clock on the dashboard before answering. “If that time’s correct, nearly two hours ago.”

She shook her head when he held out the pack towards her. 

Tig lit the end and inhaled deeply, keeping the smoke trapped in his lungs as he tried to stop staring at her. He couldn’t stop finding the differences between her and the women that were normally in his sexual orbit.

Tig took a slow drag off the cigarette while he tried to imagine the protocol of a missing ATF agent and the expected agency response.

“How long do you expect me to …… travel with you?” Kari asked as Tig’s eyes settled on the smooth hollow at the base of her throat and the uneven rise and fall of her chest. 

Tig slowly raised his eyes to meet hers and tilted his head slightly as he answered. “I’m not sure yet,” he started and continued in what he hoped was a casual tone, not wanting to add napalm to the brewing emotional forest fire. “But however long, I need to know you’re not going to be a problem Agent Stillwater.”


	3. Whores are Easier to Deal With

Kari pressed her lips together, wincing as she compressed the broken skin as she considered the weight of her situation. “What do I do?” her mind asked on a scream.

Tig nearly choked on the cloud of his exhaled smoke as he watched her pink tongue dart out and moisten her lips.

He was mesmerized by the small movement and didn’t realize at first that she was nodding slightly.

“You’re sure you’re not going to be a problem?” he asked and tried to maintain a cool façade.

Kari nodded again, a little stronger this time.

“Yeah?” he asked as he cocked an inky black eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Kari finally mumbled and rubbed her fingertips against her throbbing temples. She longed for her mostly effective rapid-release migraine medication as she was certain her skull was splitting at the seams.

She looked over when a metallic tinkling noise fell around her ears and she found her abductor holding out a dented flask towards her. 

“No thanks,” she finally said and sat up straighter in the seat, thinking alcohol wouldn’t do any good for her head except make her pay less attention and notice details that might be important for later.

Tig pretended to not notice her barely suppress a flinch when he moved away from the door and pulled on the plastic handle. “Where’s the tracker?” he asked as he patted the seat between them.

“There’s no point in denying it,” she thought in the small space before she answered. “Behind the water pump,” Kari mumbled as she stared straight ahead, feeling his eyes memorizing her, practically touching her with the weight of his gaze. 

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he pulled a warm soda from the nylon bag and held it out to her.

“Thanks,” she murmured and took the brightly colored aluminum can from him, careful to avoid their fingers brushing against each other. 

“We’ll get out of here in a minute,” he murmured, and she watched him slide out of the sturdy vehicle and pop the broad hood. 

Kari found herself gulping the soda as Tig removed and destroyed the government-issued tracker and did a once-over the rest of the SUV before getting back behind the wheel and cranking the large engine to life. 

Tig glanced over his shoulder at her as she drummed her fingers on the tops of her thighs and stared down at the floor. He felt a strange sensation slide around inside his gut and light up his central nervous as he found her fingers bare, devoid of any jewelry. “Do you belong to someone?” he thought before he spoke. 

“You want to sit up here Agent Stillwater, it’s a little bit of a drive.”

Kari shook her head. “I’m okay here and please no more Agent stuff, can you just call me Kari?”

The pull of his lips into an unreadable smile both frightened and made Kari have a glut of questions. 

“As long as you call me Tig,” he murmured as he turned around further in the driver’s seat and they locked eyes. 

“What?” Kari finally asked as his expression remained neutral and he remained silent. She wasn’t sure if she should feel like prey on the Serengeti or a pilot fish living symbiotically with a Great White shark. 

Tig shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered as he got the bulky vehicle moving and eventually spilled back onto the interstate.

Kari kept her hands clasped together in her lap as he pushed the accelerator to a comfortable cruising speed, careful to not draw the attention of the CHP.

Tig kept nervously moving his hands around the steering wheel as he kept glancing up at her in the rearview mirror. 

She shifted uncomfortably on the seat, her multiple layers and Kevlar vest making her sweat profusely, her anxiety leeched from her pores and she could smell how unpleasantly fragrant she was becoming. 

Tig felt his chest tighten when his name fell from her lips.

“Tig?”

He looked up in the mirror and met her eyes. “Yes?”

Kari cleared her throat. “Can I have one of those cigarettes?”

“Yeah, here,” he said and passed her the pack and dark green lighter. 

“Thanks,” she mumbled, eager to have the acrid cigarette smoke to drown out her body odor. 

Tig noticed how she began shifting on the seat as she took slow, deliberate drags off the cigarette. He heard her chuckle and quickly cover her smile when she   
caught him looking. 

“What’s funny?” he asked.

Kari shook her head and retrieved the empty soda can off the floorboard to flick her ashes into. “Just when I thought I was finally going to stop smoking.”

As Tig paid better attention to the sudden stoppage of traffic, back at the Wit Sec house, agents and local police swarmed. Doors were kicked in and windows ripped off in questioning everyone about the abducted agent. 

As agents descended on Charming and looked everywhere for their missing agent, Tig continued towards the cheap motel and long-term rentals, at one point, he dumped the Yukon and stole a paneled van, nearly beige with the layer of dirt. Kari slid onto the passenger seat, not wanting to sit on the bare, metal floor of the rear of the van. 

They were about half an hour from the motel, Kari had lapsed into a comfortable silence as she stared out the window at everything moving by. “Talk to her,” Tig ordered himself as he glanced over at her, he considered that she was most likely in some kind of medical shock.

“How long you been working ATF?” Tig finally asked, drawing out his words. 

Kari glanced over at him and pulled one of the three remaining cigarettes from the pack and offered him one of his own. He accepted and watched her light hers before she offered her lit one in trade for his.

Tig made sure their fingers brushed and felt a static shock as he pulled hard on the filter her lips had just been touching, tasting her breath.

“Just passed the one-year mark, from what I’ve heard, the Wit Sec babysitting is a hazing of sorts,” she said as she shook her head and rolled down the window a few inches, letting the brisk, clean outside suck in her second-hand smoke. 

“What was the original plan when you got there? The witness?” Kari asked while he inhaled and signaled for the off-ramp.

Tig ignored her question and looked at the directions he had jotted on a burger chain napkin. 

The motel appeared on the left side and was very underwhelming. The faded blue long-term condos were set in the rear of the property and their room was apparently on the ground-floor corner. 

Happy’s friends had someone’s nephew go and check-in at the motel under the false name and stolen credit card. The parking spot for the room was just out of the security camera’s entire sweep and the video was recorded over every twenty-four hours. 

Tig put the van in park and looked over at Kari as she looked out the windshield at the piss poor room. 

She barely suppressed a finch when his hand fell over her hand where it rested on the armrest. 

“It’s a short walk to the room, I’m going to come around and open your door,” Tig murmured.

Kari nodded as he added. “There won’t be any problem getting to the door?”

“I will not be a problem,” she said in a strained voice and stared at the room door through the bug-splattered windshield. 

Tig tightened his hand around hers as he spoke, “look at me.”

Kari pressed her lips together and turned her head to meet his startling blue eyes. “No problem?” he rasped musically. 

“None,” she whispered and fought the urge to try and yank her hand free. 

Tig nodded and released his hold on her before getting out of the van, gathering the duffle bags, and opening her door. 

Kari climbed out of the van and waited until he pushed the heavy door closed before following him to the room. He slid the plastic keycard until it beeped and flashed a series of green flashes before he pushed the door open. 

She followed him inside and fumbled for a light switch and flooded the room with a wan yellow light. Tig pushed the door closed and slid the extra chain lock in place, in addition to the deadbolt. 

He watched Kari look around the dingy room, pale yellow carpets and faux wood paneling the single room, extra sitting space in front of an older model flatscreen tv, closet and small bathroom with a cramped tub and shower. 

Tig watched her eyes move over the single queen bed in the middle of the room before she briefly met his eyes and turned her attention to looking for the remote control and the local news. “It’s really cold in here,” she remarked as she flipped though the channels.

“These rooms are generally rented at hourly rates, no one cares about the temperature,” he said and winked when she looked over at him.

Kari settled in the creaky chair and adjusted the volume when the commercial break was over. 

Tig took the time to walk into the small bathroom and dial Clay.

Clay picked up at the end of the first ring.

“Brother, you okay?”

Tig leaned against the door frame so he could keep Kari in sight as he half-smiled. “It’s okay, got to the motel, thank Happy.”

“Do you have a guest with you?”

Tig chuckled, “yeah.”

“Is she alive?”

“Very.”

“Is she going to stay that way?”

“Yes.”

Clay was silent for a minute. “Good,” he finally said. “Do you need more money?”

Tig shook head as he answered, “no, I’d like to get stay here a night or two and keep north.”

“Are you coming back brother?”

Tig gave a ragged sigh and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I’ve found something,” he added unhelpfully. 

“You always have a home here brother, I hope to meet this something someday. Call if you need anything,” Clay added before he ended the call.

Tig pushed his phone in his back pocket as he watched Kari watch the news and casually loosen her braid until she could run her fingers through her tangled hair. 

Kari looked over at him when the loud thump of his boots sounded as he kicked them off before slipping out of his jacket. 

Tig stretched out on the bed and slipped one hand behind his head before he patted the empty space next to him when he caught her staring. 

Kari scoffed and worked on a stubborn tangle when he patted the bed again. 

“No,” she finally said and turned her attention back to the shitty tv screen and pretended to be captivated by the weather report of sunny skies the following day.

“I thought you weren’t going to be a problem,” Tig said and sat up when she turned back to him, anger etched in her tired face. “I’m not but I’m not getting into that bed with you.” 

Tig’s mind tried to rapidly put together an approach. He reached for his discarded jacket and drained the flask, wincing as the alcohol burned a hot path down his throat and spread warmth throughout his chest and belly. “You need to do this right,” his mind warned and climbed to his feet. 

As Tig rose from the bed, Kari also stood from the creaky chair, tension filling her, a cold trickle moved down the length of her spine.

Tig held his hands up in the air and wiggled his fingers. “I promise I’ll keep my hands wherever you tell me, but you need to get in the fucking bed.” 

Kari shook her head, her blood pressure rising as she found it hard to breathe with the compression of the vest. She felt herself getting overheated despite how chilly the room was. 

Tig’s eyes moved over her face, he could practically see the coiled tension inside her, electricity building and threatening to shoot from her fingers. 

“You gotta keep this shit together,” he thought and kept his hands outstretched. “Get in the bed, you have to be tired. I’m not going to do anything out of line.”

Kari narrowed her eyes at him, unable to judge the veracity of his words since he was there to kill that young witness. She fought to keep her shoulders back despite the appeal of laying down and closing her eyes, especially getting out of the fucking vest. 

“What if I wanted to stay in that chair instead?” she asked, her voice steady.

Tig shook his head, “it’ll be cold sitting up all night.”

“I’ll risk freezing to death.”

“I can’t have that happen; a dead ATF agent isn’t good.”

“Kidnapping and assault is fine though?” she asked on a scoff.

Tig stood up taller, every moment spent with Kari reaffirming why he liked dealing with whores, livestock and the comatose.


	4. Trapped Between Wakefulness and Death

Tig ran his hands through his glossy black hair as he took a big, deliberate step backwards, needing a rapid de-escalation despite how much her words provoked him despite their accuracy. 

Kari sidestepped before he spoke, putting the flimsy chair between them. 

“Look, cease-fire, please?” he asked and raised his hands in front of him. 

“Fine but I need to clean up and use the bathroom first,” Kari finally said, hating the tinge of defeat to her tone. 

Inwardly Tig was relieved but didn’t let it show. Instead he nodded towards the bathroom, “don’t take too long.”

Kari blew out a sharp breath and walked stiffly to the bathroom, having to keep herself from slamming the door like a petulant child, groaning as she discovered the locking mechanism broken. 

She stared at the closed door before emptying her bladder which was fuller than she had realized. 

As she washed her face before running the soapy rag under her blouse and over her armpits, Tig walked over to the other side of the closed door and paused as he heard the water turning on and off. 

He pushed open the door and found Kari pulling her hair back and out of her face. 

Kari paused as he appeared in the mirror’s reflection from where he leaned casually against the doorway.

“What?” she finally asked as he remained silent, suddenly desperate to get out of the closet-sized bathroom that moments before was a refuge of sorts.

She was suddenly the ecliptic and he was an undiscovered planet drawn closer. 

“Stop doing that,” he grumbled. 

“Doing what?” Kari asked as she resumed securing her hair away from her face. 

“Leave your hair down,” Tig ordered casually as he remained in the doorway.

Kari frowned at his reflection as she paused her hands, “why?”

He clenched his teeth until his jaw popped, “is everything going to be this difficult?”

Kari couldn’t handle the invasiveness of his stare and dropped her hands to the sides of the sink. She stared down at the soapy water as it swirled down the drain. 

She blew out a low, long breath and felt every nerve receptor come to life when Tig pushed away from the doorway and closed the small distance between them.

Kari remained rigid but ready to turn inside out as he dropped his hands to settle over hers from where she curled her fingers around the porcelain in a death grip. 

Tig slowed his own breathing as he effectively trapped her in place within the circle of his arms. 

Kari held her breath as he leaned the smallest amount closer to her, their bodies almost touching. He dropped his head to the curve of her neck, letting his lips hover over her flushed skin, his exhale hot as he slid incrementally closer.

She looked up and met his eyes in the reflection as he tugged her hair free of the elastic band. 

Kari didn’t blink as Tig ran his fingers through the loosened, silken fall of her hair. “What’s the point of this?” she managed with a mostly steady tone.

Tig smiled and chuckled in an all-masculine tone that made her uterine walls quicken and stimulate her ovarian follicles as though she was a fucking cat. 

He forced himself to take a step back from her, reluctantly letting the soft strands of her hair slip away from his fingers, snagging themselves on his ragged cuticles. 

Tig felt his cock hardening behind his pants but didn’t want to cause further conflict when he needed to drink himself into oblivion.

“You can have whichever side of the bed you’d like,” he said, trying to imbue lightness into the mood. 

Kari let her shoulders slump and chuckled, “so generous,” she murmured as she gratefully left the tiny bathroom, the claustrophobia ebbing somewhat when she had more space to move. 

She settled on the side of the bed furthest from the door and unlaced her shoes, glad to have less of her body suffocating from the multiple layers. Kari was slipping out of her fitted jacket when she heard Tig crack open the top of a bottle of room-temperature sparkling water.

He looked over at her before he took a sip. “Here,” he said passing her the bottle, “there’s plenty more.”

“Thanks,” Kari said and took a few rapid sips before slowing down to not make herself sick. 

Tig twisted off the top of a flavored gin he had lifted from the safe house as she downed half the water.

He felt an unexpected twinge of regret as he watched her consume the heavily drugged water.

Tig looked away as Kari nearly finished the water, knowing this was the surest way to keep her safe from whatever she might try and get into and give her some needed rest. He had opened the bottle originally while she was in the bathroom.

Tig had spiked the water with something that he normally used to encourage reciprocation from whomever he wanted to fuck and wherever he wanted to stick his fingers, tongue, or cock.

Tig took a few burning swallows of the bitter alcohol as Kari hung her jacket in the narrow closet but left her blouse, vest, and slim-fitting slacks on. 

Kari glanced over at him after she sat back down on the edge of the mattress as the fast-acting drug raped her central nervous system, often foreplay for Tig’s fun with the nearly comatose. 

She saw him suddenly double, “what did you give me?” she slurred. 

Tig enjoyed the multiple flood of emotions across her features and he let a little toxic masculinity play peek-a-boo as he lowered his eyes to her chest and dragged his gaze down her body until he returned his eyes up to meet hers. He felt an electric trill in his groin at her small intake of breath as she tried to form her words. 

“Am I going to wake up?” Kari breathed.

“Yes,” Tig said immediately and approached her slowly even though she was nearly asleep from where she sat. 

He guided her back onto the mattress as she sagged under the party drug’s stranglehold. 

Kari mumbled incoherently as he moved her around as he pulled the covers over her and adjusted the flat pillows under her head. 

In the moment of staring down at her, Tig saw her as a goddess that had tumbled down from the peak of Mt. Olympus. 

He reached down and cupped her jaw, running the rough pad of his thumb across her full bruised lips, the small cut leaving flakes of dried blood on his thumb.

Tig licked his tongue like an orally fixated toddler, closing his eyes as he reveled in his second taste of her, wanting more. He grunted as he returned to the clear bottle and green label and took a few more swallows until he felt the pull of alcohol into sleep. 

Kari would be out for a while and would give him time to try and form a coherent plan past the end of the day. 

Tig slid under the covers on the other side of the mattress and settled on his side facing her. He propped himself up on his elbow as he watched Kari’s expression go smooth under the drug’s suction cup hold with the force of its aquatic distance cousin the deep-sea squid. 

Tig reached over and traced his fingertips along her jaw and dance down the front of her throat. He felt her strong carotid pulse under his touch as he dipped into the smooth shelf her collarbone created. Tig moved his fingers in slow circles in the sheen of sweat coating her upper chest, the Kevlar vest squeezing her tight under the long-sleeved blouse. 

Kari mumbled and rolled away from him, her hair falling in a silken wave across her back. 

Tig could feel the shitty gin’s pull into a passed out sleeplike state and closed the small distance between them and pulled her against the front of his body. He gave a ragged sigh, his alcohol laden exhale hot against the crown of her head as he molded himself against her. 

He dropped his top hand to rest casually on her hip before moving his palm in slow circles as he eventually succumbed to sleep, dropping his arm around her, squeezing her close.

The night passed dreamlessly as Kari stayed locked in the drug’s hold. 

Tig stirred awake before her, adjusting his hold on her until he could press himself firmly against the curve of her bottom, groaning as he reveled in the feel of her body under his hands. 

She didn’t feel like the women he normally fucked or used to get himself off.

He pressed his face to the warm curve of her neck and inhaled, pulling her clean scent deep into his lungs, she smelled different. 

Tig rolled away from her long enough to fetch his phone from the side table before pulling her back in the circle of his arms. He scrolled through the handful of missed messages from Clay.

He closed his eyes and blew out a relieved breath when he read the address of a condo complex a day’s drive east, a place that didn’t need to verify much for residency except a monthly payment.

Tig tossed his phone to the side as he returned his entire attention to the sleeping ATF agent. He traced his fingers along the edges of the Kevlar vest which had rubbed raw marks into her skin, not designed to be worn that long. 

Tig shifted and tugged Kari onto her back. He slipped his hands to the waist of the vest and unbuckled the clasps before the Velcro straps at her shoulders. 

As Tig moved her around pulling at her vest, he stirred Kari awake. 

Tig didn’t notice her awareness until she was pulling on his wrists. “Stop, what are you doing?” she cried out, startled awake too fast to process. She was a surgical patient emerging from anesthesia, fighting the breathing tube in her throat, unsure of whether she was actively dying. 

“I’m just helping you out of this, it can’t be comfortable,” he said quickly as Kari only increased her struggling as she further awakened. 

“I don’t need any help,” she spit and slapped him across the face, startling him with the sound her palm made upon contact. 

Tig paused his hand’s movements and stared down at her, stopped by her slap but also the foreign sensation that flooded over him as she returned his gaze, her chest heaving.

“Are you always this fucking stubborn?” he rasped as he roughly pulled her vest free. 

Kari shoved the heel of her hand into his side, over the lower ribs he had seemed to be favoring. 

“Goddammit,” he shouted with a flash of genuine anger and backhanded her, using the time it took for her vision to clear to roughly turn her over and capture her wrists behind her, burying the instant remorse he felt for striking her. 

Kari screamed as loud as she could being compressed under his weight until he adjusted the grip of her wrists to one of his hands and slid his other hand over her mouth, her already bruised lips crushed against his palm. 

Tig shushed her as she shook her head. “No screaming huh?”

Kari nodded slowly and took a few grateful breaths when he lifted his hand. Her struggling was soon reignited when he tightened his grip on her wrists and slid his other hand down her side and smooth around to the front of her belly. 

“Wait, please,” Kari managed as he fumbled at the top button of her designer slacks. 

“Please what?” Tig growled against her ear, his exhale made her shiver involuntarily as he yanked the zipper down.

“Not like this,” she mumbled so lowly he almost didn’t hear her. 

“How then?” he asked and yanked her pants down further. 

Kari closed her eyes and slumped against the surface of the mattress, her shoulders under such strain they felt close to popping. 

Tig cupped his palm over her intimacy, the cotton front of her panties all that kept him from sliding his fingers inside her. 

Tig thought of the photo of the twin boys in her wallet and spoke in the space of her continued silence. “Is there someone waiting for you at home? Children? A husband?”

Kari squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force herself to keep from crying before she finally shook her head. 

“I have a roommate, with a baby, she’s divorced. The twins are my nephews,” she managed.

“Boyfriend? Husband?” Tig asked.

Kari shook her head.

“So what’s wrong then?” he asked and began moving his palm in slow circles over her panty covered pussy as he added on a feral groan. “Just relax, this doesn’t have to be bad, a little fun will be good for both of us.”

Kari surprised them both with a genuine laugh. “You think there’s a part of this that would be good for me, fucking fun?” 

Tig made her yelp in fear when he roughly moved his hands and rolled her over to face him when she continued laughing at him. 

Kari tried to grab at him, but he caught her wrists and pushed them over her head, slamming her hands against the mattress as he shifted his lower body and pressed himself closer.

“Get off me,” she shouted as she bucked her hips. 

Tig transferred the grip of her wrists to one hand as he had earlier and pushed against a thigh out until he could insinuate himself closer to her. 

Kari gave a startled gasp when she felt him growing hard against the apex of her thighs. 

Tig frowned down at her as he was hit with the sudden realization that this was the first time he cared if the person at the end of his cock wanted anything, had needs. He wanted her to look up at him and say his name, Tig wanted to see her face when he made her come. 

Kari snorted hard and spit a glob of phlegm up into his face.

As Tig was distracted briefly as he wiped at his face, Kari tossed her head towards him, narrowly missing his nearly fractured nose. He pressed her wrists against the surface of the bed until her fingers tingled as they grew numb and slid his other hand around her slim throat, applying just enough pressure to make breathing become difficult.

Kari froze as her abductor’s blue eyes flashed with anger, crystalline bright white flames as Tig suddenly lessened his hold around her neck and tried a different approach. 

“We should discuss some ground rules,” he murmured and smoothed his hand from around her neck to slide to the back of her head. He slid his fingers through her hair and cradled her skull against his rough palm. 

Stress, anxiety, and good old-fashioned fear made Kari chuckle and shake her head as much as his firm hold would allow. “Sure, now seems like the perfect time for that. Can you please let go of my wrists, I can’t feel my hands.” 

“Are you done throwing punches?”

Kari blew out a low breath and nodded.

Tig loosened his hold enough to let circulation pick back up and make pins and needles inevitable but she was thankful to be able to flex her fingers. 

They remained in silence as Tig moved his fingertips in slow circles on her scalp, the silken strands of her hair snagging on his ragged cuticles. 

“So, what are these rules?” Kari finally asked, breaking the silence.


	5. Wanting the Entirety of Your Body and Attention

“I don’t want to have to worry about you trying to run off or drawing attention,” Tig said as he slid his hand from the fall of her hair to smooth down the front of her body and slid under the front of her blouse, dancing his fingertips in a slow circle around her belly button until she renewed her struggling with a flood of nervous energy. 

He growled and returned his fingers to entangle themselves in the heavy fall of her hair as he tightened his hand into a fist. The movement made Kari gasp as he pulled her head back, stretching her neck taut. 

“I thought you were going to stop fighting?” Tig asked in a low, dangerous tone.

“I am, but I didn’t agree to anything more than that,” Kari grunted and shook her head when he tried to capture her chin.

She groaned in frustration when Tig cupped her jaw and traced the rough pad of his thumb over her swollen lower lip. 

Kari tried to shake her head as he lowered his mouth to hover over hers. “What do ya want so we can have a little fun, ya look like you could use some stress relief,” he murmured, his exhale hot against her lips.

Tig saw the anger fill her eyes. “I’m not a whore,” Kari whispered, afraid to move with his lips so close to touching hers.

“I know you’re not,” Tig finally said and shifted as his cock began to grow uncomfortably hard behind his zipper. 

He stared down at her, “you’re something else,” Tig thought. 

Kari blinked up at him as his expression was unreadable in the palpable silence. “What else,” she started and cleared her throat before speaking a little stronger. 

“What are the rest of these rules?”

Tig shook his head. Scientists would attribute every decision from that moment forward to hormones released by his pituitary gland, neurological pathways, and genetic sequencing. Cosmo would say he fell head over heels and free fell into something he’d never felt before. 

“I’d like to head out in a few hours, there’s a place that’ll be safe for us.”

“For us?” she parroted, adding quickly. “How much longer to you expect me to keep traveling with you?”

Tig pushed his hand further under her shirt and smoothed up her sternum, teasing his fingers over the lace edging of her bra. He shrugged, “until things settle down, it’ll be our temporary home.”

“You want to play fucking house?” Kari scoffed as she blinked rapidly up at him.

“We’ll just take it a day at a time,” Tig added with another shrug. 

“And just what do I get for all these concessions?” she asked as the constant pressure he kept on her wrists was making the ache spill into her elbows. 

“What do you want?” he asked and pressed his face against the warm curve of her neck, his exhale hot against her flushed skin. 

Kari moaned at the dull pain in her upper arms, “I’d really like you to let go of my wrists.” She didn’t care if it sounded like she was pleading.

Tig slowly released her wrists, still wary that she might throw a left hook. 

Kari let out a relieved sigh as she flexed her fingers and rotated her hands in circles, wincing at the bracelets of pain around her wrists. 

She dropped her hand to close around his wrist as he began to slide his palm over the satin cup of her bra. Tig squeezed her breast and forced a gasp to spill from   
her lips. 

“You’re beautiful,” he rasped as he never stopped massaging and squeezing her breast through the satin, lace-edged bra.

“Don’t say that,” Kari managed and tugged at his wrist, only making him shift and press her more fully against the mattress.

“Why not?”

Kari shook her head but didn’t answer, wanting his eyes to be off of her. The invasiveness of his gaze suffocated her, and she raised both hands to rest against his chest. “If we’re really going to be on the road soon, I’d like to clean up better, get something to eat?”

Tig wanted to feel her hands move across his body and fumble his clothes free, wanted her to crave touching him. “You need to think about her comfort,” he scolded himself.

Kari slowed her breathing as the blue-eyed criminal regarded her, the smell of worn, oiled leather and the woodsy masculinity assaulted her senses. 

Tig narrowed his eyes, unsure of what to do, he’d never had to ask anyone for permission for anything. Nothing would be denied, and he was accustomed to getting what he wanted with enough brute force and threats or inflection of violence and bodily harm. 

“You’ll get in the car when I say and not make me regret letting you up?”

Kari nodded, “I wouldn’t be the first agent ever hurt or killed on duty,” she reminded herself. 

Tig flattened his hand flat over her smooth belly, closing his eyes as he was bombarded by a slide show of everything he wanted to do with her trapped under him. 

She struggled to not let out a relieved sigh when he reluctantly forced himself to move away from her and gave a low grunt as he brushed a hand over his painfully hard cock pressing against the back of the zipper. 

Kari’s hands shook as she smoothed her clothes back into and buttoned her slacks closed before moving sideways off the bed as her predatory captor watched her with minute closeness. She held a hand against the wall to steady herself as she walked towards the bathroom and paused before she pushed the door completely open.

She half-turned to speak but couldn’t find the words.

As Kari tried to collect her thoughts and turn them into coherent words, back in Charming, the place was being turned inside out and milked until it was bone dry in search of the missing ATF agent and MIA witness. The witness protection house was gone over with a fine-tooth comb and even the street cordoned off and every tire   
tread examined. 

Agent June Stahl had become a tumor that had attached itself to Clay, she popped up everywhere he looked, knowing he was aware of Agent Stillwater’s exact   
location, whether she was living or dead. 

Agent Stahl was assuming Kari was long dead at that point but wanted to at least recover the body for the family. 

As June watched Clay from the blacked-out window of a sedan as he chatted up some men who were no doubt wanted in multiple states with no patches visible, back in the rundown, usually hourly rented motel, Tig’s eyes were glued to the back of her skull and immediately trapped her in his gaze when she turned to face him, an unasked question on her swollen lips. 

“There’s no lock on this door,” Kari finally managed.

Tig nodded as she cleared her throat before continuing. “Will you give me some privacy?”

“I don’t want to,” he thought. Tig nodded and half-bowed.

“Thanks,” Kari said and tried not to roll her eyes. 

Tig watched her push the door shut and closed his eyes as he heard her crank the water and let the tub fill. 

He clenched his hands in and out of loose fists, fighting a primitive need to want to throw open the door and demand every bit of her body and attention. 

Tig paced the room until he heard her shut the water off and then the light splashing sound as she slipped into the tub. He stalked towards the bathroom and held his breath as he stood outside the close, not locked door.

On the other side, Kari slid her aching body into the near-scalding water and leaned back, reaching for a washcloth. She soaked and wrung out the grey square cloth and folded it into a burrito shape until she could rest the fabric over her eyes. 

“How the fuck did this happen?” she mumbled aloud, unaware that Tig was pressing his ear to the door, careful to not push too hard as he strained for any noise.

Kari sniffed hard as she thought about her roommate Jenna and young son Pierre, she felt tears sting her eyes when she imagined sitting at her desk and talking to her bright yellow Oscar fish named Oscar. 

A sob escaped Kari’s lips as she realized she might never be teased again about her religious dedication to reality television and Botox-inflated, fake tit sporting,   
cougar man-eaters. 

Tig raised a hand and settled it in the middle of the closed door when he heard her light cries.

“I hope this isn’t a mistake,” he thought as he pushed open the door, slowly enough that it didn’t squeak on its uneven hinges. 

Kari jumped and sat upright in the tub, the wash rag following off her face to splash on the bubbled surface when his words reached her. 

“Why are you crying?” he asked lamely.

Kari sniffed hard. “I’m not, I got soap in my eyes.”

Tig nodded before she added.

“I thought you were going to let me have time in the bathroom alone,” she partially accused.

Tig looked down at his feet, the tips of his boots not quite touching the peeling linoleum of the bathroom floor. “I’m not in the bathroom,” he said casually and pulled his nearly empty package of cigarettes.

“Can I have one of those?” she asked as he flicked the lighter.

He nodded and exhaled a cloud of acrid smoke which he then walked through.

Tig passed her the next to the last cigarette and paused before flicking the lighter to the end, his eyes moving over the bountiful bubbles on the water’s surface, hiding her body.

“Can I join you in there?” he rasped.

Kari narrowed her eyes and held the unlit cigarette from her mouth. “No, or it that the price for asking for one of these?” she asked. 

Tig shook his head and brought flame forth under the flick of his thumb. 

She nodded her thanks and took a deep drag off the chemical-laden tobacco and settled back in the tub, the bubbles rising up to just under her chin.

Tig leaned against the sink, each of them lost in their own thoughts. 

Her voice brought his eyes to hers. “Could you give me some privacy to change?”

Tig wanted to say no and stand there until she had to get out of the tub. He nodded and settled a folded towel on the edge of the tub before he started to leave. 

“Wait,” she called to his back and he restrained his enthusiasm to meet any request. 

“Is there anything I can change into?”

“Lemme check,” he murmured and dug through some of the bags he’d found in the back of the ATF vehicle before they abandoned it. He found a long-sleeve flannel   
shirt that was four times too big for her but would be helpful in the chilly room as well as a pair of drawstring linen pants that would probably fit. 

He laid the clothes on the edge of the sink and gave her the privacy he said he would. Tig opened a bottle of scotch and took a few burning swallows as he heard the water splash and drain as she got out of the tub. 

He opened and closed his hands into loose fists as he fought the urge to go back on his word and see how things landed. 

Kari emerged in the tentlike shirt and tossed the pants to the side. “Those are too small and uncomfortable to sleep in,” she said and quickly slipped under the faded bed linen.

Tig held up the bottle and she nodded, eager to have the alcohol soothe her nerves and warm her belly. “Can you turn on the news?” she asked as he passed her a plastic cup of the aged scotch. 

He tossed her the remote as he ducked into the bathroom and dialed Clay on one of the many burners. 

Clay picked up in the middle of the second ring, Tig could hear the background grow quiet as Clay shut himself into an empty room. 

“You okay brother?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“Is that agent still alive?”

“Yeah,” Tig said as he peered around the doorway and watched Kari flip through the channels, her profile that of a Romanov princess.

“Is she worth it brother?”

Tig’s breathing slowed as he watched Kari wince as she rubbed at her shoulders.

“Yes,” Tig said and ended the call a few minutes later as he settled on the bed next to her and pulled the remote from her hand and lowered the volume as the news went to a commercial break and a popular 80’s actor began talking about colon health and early cancer detection.

“What are you doing?” Kari managed as Tig cupped her face with both of his hands and crushed his lips to hers. Kissing her until she was breathless as he slid one hand down the protruding knobs of her spine, down the curve of her lower back to cup her bottom through the flannel shirt. 

Tig could feel the tension under his hands and lips, how fragile she felt and the fear that made the air around her reek with the sweet rottenness of fear and he knew he had made that happen and felt his gut ache with regret.

He lifted his lips and pushed her backwards until he could press his face over her flat belly, feeling the pounding of her abdominal aorta under his ear as he inhaled deeply and pulled her scent deep into his lungs. 

“Forgive me,” he groaned against her belly as he squeezed her hips through the oversized shirt. 

Kari couldn’t help but chuckle in confusion and reached down and tentatively smoothed her fingers through his lush hair. 

“Should I absolve you of your sins?” 

Tig sat up and caught her hand. “Yes,” he growled as he pressed his lips to her palm. 

Tig felt himself struggle to not stumble over his words, finding himself nervous as he longed to tear the shirt with such force the buttons flew through the air. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he thought.

The man who took body parts as trophies during fights was now William fucking Wallace turned mute.

Tig smoothed his hands up and down the outside of her thighs, brushing the bare skin behind her knees as he pulled her thighs to either side of his hips and kneaded the supple flesh of her calves as he stared down at her. 

“Who are you Agent Kari Stillwater?” he groaned and reveled in the gasp he forced from her when she felt his hardness press against her.

Kari shook her head, unsure of what he wanted to hear. “I’m a government employee, I rent a condo that’s way too expensive for the square footage, I have so much school loan debt,” she babbled until Tig stopped her words with the press of his lips against hers. 

“Why aren’t you married? Or at least attached?”

Kari shrugged, “no one’s asked I guess.”

“No friends you occasionally fuck, no other agents?” Tig asked and bit back a hiss as he felt a twinge through his cock as he dropped a hand to smooth up the inside of her thigh as Kari shook her head.

Kari closed her hand around his wrist, and he let her believe she made him stop his hand’s movement. “Can you please turn off the light?” she murmured and flushed a deep pink hue. 

“Why?” he asked hoarsely as he lifted his hand and stepped back off the bed.

Kari sat up and watched him began to pull off his clothes, pausing before he pulled off a pair of faded blue boxers. “What if I asked you to more than just play house with me?” he asked as he pushed his boxers to the floor as her eyes moved over his naked body.

She was torn between two realities as her body reacted to seeing his hardening cock hanging heavily between his thighs. 

“I don’t want this,” Kari said with a mostly strong voice and held her hands out in front of her as he rejoined her on the low-quality linen.

Tig yanked at the covers and slid under them, tugging on her to join him. “Then just lay here with me for a while please,” he begged as she let herself relax into his naked arms.


	6. A Forcible Invitation to Permission

Tig shifted until he could hold her comfortably against his bare chest before he let himself grow still as Kari tried to keep her breathing steady and even. 

He closed his eyes as Kari carefully settled her palm over his heart, tracing the tattoos that decorated his skin. She could feel his heart pounding erratically in the side of his throat as she danced her fingertips up his neck.

Tig held his breath as she trailed the pads of her fingers over the myriad of scars that decorated his upper body. 

“What’s more than playing house mean?” Kari asked as she traced a feather-soft touch over the fresher ridge of raised scar tissue that stood out on his sharp cheekbone.

Tig snaked his hand out and captured her wrist with reptilian speed and pressed his lips to her palm before answering. 

His lips pulled into a slow smile that made a shiver race up Kari’s spine as he carefully pushed an errant lock of her hair behind her ear. “I guess it means everything that comes with sharing a house and life.”

Kari pressed her lips together as she considered her words as Tig watched her expression for the most minute changes or clue to her thinking before she spoke.

“What kind of man are you …… Tig?”

“Honestly?”

She nodded.

“Probably not as terrible as whatever your pretty ATF head can imagine,” Tig murmured and toyed with the top button of her flannel shirt. 

Kari shifted when he popped the top button open. “What’s it look like sharing a house and life in your world?”

“How would you want things to be?” he countered quickly and roughly man-handled her until she was suddenly flat on her back, wrapped up like a spider’s web-wrapped treat in his arms. Kari felt her mouth go dry as she stared up into his crystalline blue eyes.

“I asked you first,” she said petulantly and made Tig chuckle.

“I’m sure you grasp the concept of living together and all it entails,” he murmured and traced the tip of his index finger in a slow circle over her sternum. 

“If I say no?”

Tig paused drawing circles on her flushed skin and met her wide, unblinking eyes. She saw genuine anticipatory remorse cloud the bright blue of his stare. “That’d be unfortunate.”

Kari licked her dry lips, Tig practically drooled with desire as he watched the movement of her pink tongue. 

“If I were to, to decide to stay with you, does that give you some kind of permission to do whatever you want?”

Tig shook his head, “no,” he murmured hoarsely, meaning that as much as he was capable.

As Kari stared up at him, weighing the veracity of the words from the man she just violently met, back in Charming, Agent June Stahl paced the office of Hale’s commandeered office and opened Kari’s ATF personnel file. 

She traced her unpainted, short, blunt nails around the edges of Kari’s photocopied identification. 

“Are you still alive?” June asked the still image, having familiarized herself with Alexander “Tig” Trager’s rap sheet as well as the laundry list of crimes that didn’t quite stick to him.

June cocked an eyebrow, impressed at Kari’s test scores. As she read through the rest of the file, back in the shitty, generally only used for hourly fucking motel, Tig smoothed his hand inside of Kari’s flannel shirt and flattened his hand over her heart, feeling it beat rapidly under his palm, a bird trapped in too small of a gilded cage. 

His phone chose to trill loudly at that moment, and he knew it was an important call since so few people would even have the number. 

Tig dropped his head, his dark curls brushing the warm curve of her neck, tickling, as he sagged and started to move away from her. “Fuck,” Tig growled and slipped from between the covers and walked to his discarded sweatshirt on the floor and the ringing phone tucked in the cotton pocket. 

“Yeah,” he growled as he stared at Kari as she pulled the covers tighter around herself. 

“Get out of there, Unser overheard Stahl talking about a pinged location and we can’t risk that it’s close to where you are,” came Clay’s voice from the other end of the call.

Tig nodded, keeping his expression neutral as Kari watched his face upon hearing Clay’s words.

Kari rolled away from him, the weight of his gaze too much as well as being faced with the power of his casual nudity and wave of overwhelming masculinity and confidence.

Tig ended the call and retrieved his worn jeans from the floor and slipped into them. Kari looked back over her shoulder at him when she heard the chains give a metallic sounding concerto as he buckled his belt. 

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

Tig’s breath caught in his throat as she looked back over her shoulder at him, the flannel shirt slipping and leaving part of her upper back bare. 

“Don’t move,” he demanded and stalked towards her, making her feel like she had the full attention of an apex predator.

Kari frowned in confusion before he climbed on the bed and pressed his lips to the bare skin over the curve of her shoulder blade. 

Tig groaned in frustration, not wanting to have to expedite leaving. “We have to go now,” he whispered huskily, his exhale hot against her smooth skin.

Kari tucked her questions away for later at the urgent and unspoken subtext in his tone. She took the too snug pants from earlier to the bathroom and struggled into them without any grace and buttoned her blouse that didn’t smell too awful. 

By the time she splashed some water on her face and emptied her bladder, Tig had most of the bags haphazardly repacked and keys in hand. 

Kari paused, unable to propel herself forward for a moment, trapped between fight or flight. 

Freeze.

“Kari?” Tig said easily, carefully set down the bags he’d been holding and tucked the keys in his back pocket.

Her breath slowed as he closed the distance between them, cautiously holding his hands in front of him. “Kari?”

She shook her head and cleared her throat. “It changes everything if I willingly walk out that door with you, I become complicit in anything further,” Kari said as she rubbed her eyes.

She looked up at Tig as he held out a hand towards her.

“Will you come with me?” he asked and would’ve gladly sacrificed a goat at the feet of any real god in gratitude when Kari reached out and let him close his large hand around hers.


	7. Who Are You?

The warmth of Tig’s large hand swallowing hers made her shiver involuntarily. Kari felt a wash of embarrassment at her physical reaction while Tig simultaneously felt a twinge in his cock at wanting her body under his, making her shudder and quake.

She tried to casually tug her hand free and pretend to smooth down her already smoothed down hair. 

“You ready to go?” he breathed as she collected herself and nodded.

Tig opened the door. “Try to walk naturally,” he murmured as she walked towards him. 

Kari couldn’t help but laugh loudly, “natural? Gotcha,” she snorted and rolled her eyes as she crossed the shitty room’s threshold and immediately felt like a fucking child.

Kari stiffened and tried not to goose step or look like she had a stick up her ass as she marched to the stolen van with a newly stolen set of license plates and the pried off VIN number tossed out the window earlier on the road.

Tig didn’t see any of her facial expressions or detect anything out of sync in her gait. He only had wide, unblinking crystalline blue eyes for the space between her upper thighs, sunshine peeking through as she walked away. He could’ve waterboarded himself with his own saliva as he restrained the desire to slide a hand up the inside of her thigh before he bent her over and fucked her. 

As Tig shook himself back to reality and followed her to the van, still anticipating her trying to bolt, back in Charming, ATF agent June Stahl paced the small, rented hotel room. She had kicked her spiked heels under his desk and let the coarse fibers of the carpet tease her nylon-encased toes. June had Tig’s file spread across the floral surface of the bed linen, trying to find the man buried between the many charges that stuck and the ones that he had slipped away from. 

June frowned at one of Tig’s menacing mug shots, she reread Kari’s academy entrance essay and following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather. As she opened a bottle of red wine she had purchased earlier, hours away, Tig tried to keep his eyes on the road and the endless miles of asphalt instead of on Kari’s profile and every bit of exposed skin.

He moved to the middle lane as he passed a big rig, his gaze lingering on the fabric of the linen pants pulled taut around her supple flesh. He watched the linen wrinkle as she leaned forward and fumbled with the radio dials until she landed on an easy-listening station.

Kari reached down the side of the seat and yanked on the plastic handle until the seat reclined. She fought an audible sigh as she stared out at the passing landscape of varying fruit trees and oil refineries. 

Tig hated to take his eyes off her as traffic snarled with an upcoming exit impacted by roadwork. 

He was staring a few cars ahead and trying to find a smoother moving lane when she reached out quickly and turned the radio off as she spoke. Kari was nervous and her voice was shriller than she intended, she cleared her throat before repeating herself.

“What kind of crimes have you committed?”

“That’s right to the point,” Tig smirked and accelerated when a spot opened up in the left lane before continuing. “Don’t you know? The ATF bitch all over the club has to have shared all our files with you, hasn’t she?”

Tig was genuinely surprised as Kari shook her head as she answered. “I transferred here not too long ago, Stahl keeps a lot to herself,” she added lowly and rubbed her temples.

“Are you okay?” he asked and laid a hand on top of her thigh, squeezing lightly.

Kari grew still and tried not to stare at the tip of his hand. “Just a headache, I need some coffee or any form of caffeine and a fifteen-hour nap.”

Tig looked at an upcoming rectangular billboard that boasted a popular coffee chain in the approaching shopping center. 

He wordlessly moved to the slow lane which would eventually exit and dump them in front of the green-signed coffee house. 

Tig parked further away than a Super Bowl winning quarterback could throw a pigskin, keeping the engine idling before he turned towards her. “There’s a drive-through there,” he started as he nodded towards the colorful menu and round speaker to shout your order. 

Kari glanced over briefly before bringing her eyes back to meet his as he continued.

“You need to get in the back and stay out of sight,” Tig murmured, his tone growing empty and full of fatal seriousness as he slid a faded beer cap over his luscious hair, thick and glossy black as a raven’s pinfeathers. 

Kari nodded and maneuvered between the small space between their seats until she could hunker down away from the shopping center’s surveillance that began just outside of where he had the van in neutral. 

“What do you want?” Tig called back, her voice returning even though he couldn’t see her beautiful face in the rearview mirror, or her full lips form each word.

“A large, extra-foam, soy caramel macchiato,” came Kari’s voice from the rear of the van. 

Tig shook his head at the multiple syllables that the word coffee had evolved into. He ordered her fancy drink in a staccato manner before adding a coffee-flavored coffee and random pastries to the order before driving to the window. 

Kari heard him pass over money and collect his change before navigating the few turns until he had the vehicle back on the freeway and soon up to eighty-five. 

“It’s safe for you to come back up here,” he called back to her once the rearview mirror reflected five lanes of freeway. 

Kari made her way back to the passenger seat and gladly reached for the hot, sweetened, caramel drink. 

She didn’t feel his eyes memorizing her as she took a slow sip, she didn’t see him tip into a state of entrancement when Tig’s eyes zeroed in on a touch of toffee-colored foam perched on her upper lip. 

In the very moment before her pink tongue darted out and licked away the kiss of the latte foam, he was transfixed. Tig’s heart was momentarily paralyzed before adrenaline flooded his system. His chest tightened and for a second he forgot to breathe, emotions infiltrated his system and filled each cell until they threatened to burst. “I’ll do anything you ask to have you,” he thought as his gallbladder released bitter bile and the bottom dropped out of his gut as Kari looked over and caught him staring. 

Tig’s eyes dilated as her sudden and full attention stimulated each of his ropy nerve endings. 

“Did you say something?”

“Fuck, did I? Did I say that out loud?” he thought.

He nearly shouted his relief when his scrambling thoughts were given a reprieve by his phone chiming in rapid succession. 

Tig yanked his eyes away from her as he fished his phone out of his pocket, glancing at the brief text message Clay had sent. 

“Hale and Stahl in meeting w/attorney gen. at noon, keep moving.”

“Who sent that?” Kari asked, not half-expecting him to even entertain answering. 

“From a brother, we’ll be on the road a while longer,” he said vaguely.

Kari took a few more sips of the toasty coffee before speaking. “How many people have you killed?”

Tig looked over, “a few,” he said easily.

Kari blew out a deep breath. “I know I said I didn’t read about your criminal past but don’t say bullshit like that.”

“How many do you think?” he countered.

“Forget it,” she scoffed and replaced her cup in the stained, plastic holder before turning her attention to the monotonous fields, pastures, and industrial buildings. 

“More than the ATF knows about,” Tig finally said.

“What other kinds of crimes?” she asked, still watching the fluffy cumulous clouds high overhead.

“Nothing you’d approve of baby,” Tig chuckled and winked as he returned his hand to the top of her thigh.

Kari initially frowned and fought a flush as he dropped his eyes to the exposed skin of her chest before back to the traffic flowing around them.

They stayed in silence for a while after that as Kari pressed the volume button and brought the staticky pop song to fill the van. 

Tig felt the tension swimming under the thin linen that covered her warm, supple skin. His mind let him fall back into a rabbit hole of remembering his crimes, from stabbing his first-grade classmate over a piece of carrot cake to slitting a rival club’s old lady throat after she swallowed his come before he went and found a sexy, willing, and wanting sweet butt to lick his cock clean later before he passed out on the pool table.

He frowned as he felt a stab of regret for needing to keep scaring her, keeping her on the razor’s edge. “Stop being such a fucking dick,” he scolded himself and reluctantly lifted his hand to lower the volume of the radio. 

“Why’d you become an ATF agent?” Tig asked, knocking her off balance. 

Kari was distracted enough by his question to let a little tension fall away. “My grandfather and dad both had thirty-year careers as agents.”

“Are your siblings also agents?”

“No, my sister is an attorney in Philadelphia.”

“You see her much?”

“Once a year usually, she flies out here for the holidays and visits the family up and down the coastline.”

Tig watched her reach for her half-empty cup in slow-motion, feeling a cold, trickly sensation tease his spinal cord from the base of his skull to the tip of his tailbone at the sight of her bare ring finger. 

“No ex-husband or future Mr. Stillwater?” he asked with a wink as she switched her cup to her right hand and almost choked at his question. 

Kari lifted her hand and covered a smile when Tig grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. 

“Why do you always cover your smile?”

Kari let him slide his fingers from her wrist to intertwine with hers. “It’s reflexive, I used to have really crooked teeth and only recently had those plastic trays that straighten your teeth.”

Tig hated that he had to pay attention to the road as he squeezed her hand. “Don’t ever cover any part of yourself from me,” he raggedly demanded.

Tig took his foot off the accelerator as they approached a CHP weigh station, a line of freightliners being inspected. He narrowed his eyes within their dark fringes of lashes as his mind tried to reimagine meeting Kari for the first time in a more casual setting, preferably where there was copious alcohol. He fantasized how he’d replay their first interaction where he’d tell her the barrel of his gun was bigger than hers, instead of choking her into unconsciousness and abducting her.

Kari’s voice broke his concentration. “Can we stop at a bathroom soon?”

Tig nodded, his thoughts still fuzzy with heady thoughts of stripping her bare and plunging his cock into her wet center until their intimate flesh kissed.

Kari nodded her thanks as he exited a few miles later and took a few left turns until he reached a state park with bathrooms that were accessible without purchasing a day pass.

Tig parked in front of the row of beige toilets behind bright green doors with the county logo and a large oak tree in the background. 

They both climbed out of the van and Kari felt herself flinch involuntarily as Tig closed a large hand around her upper arm and pulled her towards the larger wheelchair-accessible bathroom. 

“What are you doing?” she asked as he pulled open the door and began to tug her inside.

“I can’t trust you to be by yourself and I’m not up for chasing you down,” Tig murmured as he dragged his eyes slowly from the crown of her head to the tips of her shoes and back to meet her unblinking eyes. 

Kari took a step back as he locked the door behind them, confining them and blocking the only way out.


	8. What If?

Tig watched her eyes sweep around the room as she clenched and unclenched her hands into fists, nothing available to even throw except single-ply toilet paper and flimsy seat covers.

“I won’t watch,” he said and turned around to the face the door, leaving Kari to stare at his back.

Tig could feel her frown beating against him and held his hands out theatrically, “I promise,” he drew out. 

Kari’s impending loss of bladder control threatened to win in a wet manner and Tig held his breath and waited as she emptied her bladder, her hot piss splashing the smooth surface of the blue toilet water. 

They both breathed in slowly through their noses and out their mouths as she tore off a handful of the cheap toilet paper and wiped herself clean.

Tig spoke as he heard her pull her snug pants up and turned around as he spoke, catching her tie the drawstring into a limp bow.

“We got a ways to go, are you feeling up to that?”

Kari stared down at loopy bow as she side-stepped to the metal sink and pink pump hand soap. 

“That’s fine,” she said and washed her hands with the icy water. 

Kari rinsed her hands clean before cupping the water and splashing it over her face before dabbing her skin dry with the rough, brown paper towels. 

She balled up the paper in her hands when she turned and found his eyes searching hers. 

“What?” Kari asked, her senses at sudden Def Con One at the unreadable expression in his neutral eyes, reflexively considering throwing the crushed wad of 100% recycled paper towels at him like a dirty snowball. 

Tig blinked slowly as he let his hands splay out casually at his sides, his fingertips twitching to find out what her face looked like when she came. He blew out a sharp breath as he felt blood begin to trickle into his thick cock tucked behind his zipper. 

“Are you okay?” Kari asked, her wariness pushed aside when she misread his barely suppressed lust as feelings of sudden illness. 

Kari took an automatic step forward before the cloud obscuring his surging, heated raw need fell away from Tig’s sparkling eyes and she found herself feeling like a wounded gazelle with the hungry, singular attention of a blood-thirsty carnivorous predator. 

“No, I’m not okay,” Tig admitted with a rasp and thoroughly shook Kari’s jumbled thoughts like a holiday snow globe.

“What is it?” she asked with a stilted tone, caught between moving forward or backwards against the sink.

“I’m not sure I’m up for all the driving,” Tig began before Kari quickly interrupted.

“I can drive, just give me directions.”

“It’s not the length of the drive,” he interrupted back as he started to close the already small distance between them. “We need to deal with something before we get out of here.”

His tone and movement forced her backwards, but any progress was stopped by the edge of the sink biting into her lower back as he continued to advance.

“We? Deal with what?” Kari asked as he put one hand on the sink on either side of her hips, keeping her locked within his arms, a breath away from touching her. 

“You’re distracting me, I can’t focus,” Tig said as he leaned closer, his exhale hot against her face.

Kari scoffed and frowned, her irritation growing and overshadowing her discomfort for a moment.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped and tried to physically slide out of the circle of his arms. 

Tig growled and caught her up in his embrace, pulling her nearly off his feet as he pressed his lips to her ear. “I can’t think of anything else but fucking you,” he whispered urgently and roughly pushed her back against the sink, simultaneously lifting her until he could insinuate himself between her thighs.

“Well, that’s direct,” Kari managed as she shifted as much as his hold would allow, still processing his admission. 

“Is it the worst idea?” Tig asked in a strangled tone as he smoothed a hand through her hair and pressed his lips against the racing pulse in the side of her neck.

He didn’t catch everything Kari whispered, only the word “obligation,” came through clear.

Tig teased his long fingers through her hair and pulled her head back until her neck grew taut, whispering as his lips hovered over hers. “What did you say?”

Kari held his gaze as long as she could until she sagged under his hold and how wrapped up he had her in his arms, letting her eyes fall closed as she spoke.

“I was thinking of the oath I took, taking the obligation freely,” she breathed, opening her eyes as she added. “Defending foreign and domestic enemies.”

“I’m not your enemy,” Tig murmured and kept his hold in her warm silken strands unbreakable as he slid his free hand to smooth under the curve of her bottom and tug her closer.

Kari inhaled sharply as he slid his hand to the tied, floppy bow of her linen pants, lightly tugging. 

“I’m not your enemy,” Tig repeated before he carefully let his lips touch hers, forcing himself to take his time.

“Take this obligation freely,” Kari’s mind repeated on a loop as she tentatively raised her hands to rest on his waist, partially for the self-serving need for balance. 

“Freely, freely,” she nearly said aloud as she slid one hand to close around his wrist as he pulled at her drawstring bow with greater urgency. 

“I couldn’t possibly have sex in this filthy bathroom,” Kari chuckled nervously as she pushed at his hand.  
within a breath from touching the front of his body. 

“How about the van?” Tig countered quickly and easily shook her hand free.

“No, I can’t,” she murmured shaking her head.

“Can’t or won’t?” he asked as he leaned back to search her eyes, scrutinizing every minute muscle movement in her expression. 

Kari opened her mouth to speak but didn’t know how to explain the four guys she had wrapped her life around and got fucked over worse each time.

The high school boyfriend who promised the moon.

The college boyfriend who promised the solar system.

The rebound boyfriend turned fast fiancé and most recently, the crushing, bitterly ended one-night stand with another agent that led to her transfer to the other coastline. 

“This is all way too fast and overwhelming,” Kari managed and covered her mouth as she laughed and added. “I had a bad experience with rushing stuff and found out the hard way that I’m not into casual sex.”

Tig pulled her fingertips away from her mouth and adjusted his grip until he could slide the same hand to his zipper and fumble the metal tab down.

Kari renewed her struggling and tried to kick free when he had one hand occupied with his zipper. 

“Wait,” he demanded and begged on a needy growl as he yanked his hardening cock free and stroked it to painfully hard life. 

“What’s wrong with casual?” he asked as he increased the squeezing rhythm around the thick shaft of his rigidity, his breathing picking up the pace.

“Sex should mean something,” she answered quickly and lowly as he paused jerking at his dick long enough to wrench the wad of paper towels from her clenched fist.

“How could I make it mean something with me?” Tig panted as an electrical coil tightened through his throbbing length and made his balls pull up close to his body, readying to come.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Kari gasped as she felt him rub the smooth head of his cock against the inside of her thigh, fighting every fiber in his being that wanted to tear the crotch of her pants open and bury himself to the hilt in her wet center. 

“I’m not going to take anything you don’t want to give,” Tig said on a strangled groan as he felt his orgasm an imminent event.

Kari watched his pupils dilate and his sparkling cerulean blue orbs practically dilated as he came hard against the crumpled ball of paper towels, the recycled fibers soaking up his sticky seed. 

As he tried to get his breathing rate under control, the blissful afterglow of his stimulated nervous system let him see what she needed, what she was afraid to ask for.

Tig buried his face in the warm curve of her neck, feeling her pulse galloping under his lips, his exhale warm as he spoke against her flushed skin. 

“What did you say?” Kari asked, unsure if she had clearly interpreted his muffled words.

“What if we were married?” Tig asked raggedly, urgently crushing his mouth to hers and thrusting his tongue against her lips, fucking her mouth like he wanted to fill her cunt.


	9. Begging with a Lungful of Stale Air

Kari laughed and smiled too fast to cover it.

As her full lips pulled into a wide smile, Tig became a planet drawn to the ecliptic in the supple flesh and beauty under his hands.

Their worlds collided as hormonal dams burst in both their brains and flooded their nervous systems with cataclysmic waves of norepinephrine and dopamine which caused a chain reaction as they each pulled the stale air deep into their lungs, the dancing alveoli vibrated with the stimulation.

“What’s the punchline?” she finally managed and shifted as the edge of the sink bit into the tender flesh behind her smooth thighs.

Tig uncomfortably shoved his softening cock back behind his zipper and gripped her chin, his thumb tracing across her lower lip. “No punchline.” 

Kari scoffed and gave a strange noise between a laugh and a harsh scoff. She narrowed her eyes as he kept his grip firm as she searched his face.

“I don’t understand,” she finally managed lamely.

“Don’t fuck this up,” Tig thought as he smoothed his hands down her sides to briefly rest on her hips, squeezing lightly before he let her move away from the sink, hearing her ragged sigh of relief when the sink edge pressure was lessened. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” he murmured quickly and lifted his hands to cup her face. “I can do better,” Tig groaned and touched his lips to hers, begging any known deity in the entirety of the known and unknown universe for her to return his kiss.

“Lemme try,” he begged and dropped to his knees on the filthy tile floor in front of her and smoothed his hands up and down her calves, feeling the curve of her musculature through the thin linen pants. 

“Good lord; get off that disgusting floor,” Kari said, thinking of all the diseases that could be soaking into the knees of his faded black jeans. 

Tig shook his head and wordlessly slid his hands up the outside of her thighs until he closed his arms around her and pressed the side of his face against her lower belly. 

“Get up, what are you doing?” Kari asked breathlessly as he tightened his arms until the drawstring bow was crushed against his cheek. 

“Not until you say you’ll give me a chance,” he demanded on a tone that still sounded like he was begging. 

“You can’t ask me that right now,” Kari sputtered as she chuckled nervously. 

Tig shifted and looked up at her. 

Kari’s breath caught as the endless blue abyss of his eyes hypnotized her. “When can I ask you?” he asked.

“Later,” she gasped as he rose to his feet and crushed his lips to hers, not caring at the moment if she returned the enthusiasm. 

“We will return to this later,” Tig stated easily when he lifted his lips.

Kari turned around when he walked over and took a camel-sized piss.

She was grateful when he pushed opened the door for her and she could get a lungful of fresh air.

Tig followed her to the van, his eyes mesmerized by the gentle sway of her hips as she walked to the passenger side. He opened her door, reluctant to leave without knowing what her pussy tasted like. 

Tig navigated the van back to the interstate and soon they were moving with the flow of traffic. As Kari adjusted her seat for the long drive, back in Charming, Agent   
Stahl was once again harassing Clay as he was checking out a leaking radiator on a classic iron roadster. 

Clay and June traded barbs as she peppered him with questions about Tig and where he currently was. 

Clay lit the end of a cigar as he smirked at June. “He’s on vacation.”

“Where’s he vacationing?”

“Sandals Resort,” Clay said and exhaled a cloud of acrid smoke at June’s sharp-featured face.

To her credit she didn’t cough or even sniffle. 

June snapped her fingers to get a few of the other agent’s attention. “Take this fucking place apart.”

As the agent’s milled about and began accounting for every wrench, bolt and screw, hours and hours away and only continuing further north, Tig glanced over at Kari as she stared out the window and drummed her fingers on top of her thighs in time to the song on the radio.

“Is it later?” Tig asked making Kari frown in confusion for a moment. 

She reached out and turned down the volume, “sure, why not.”

Tig reached over and settled his hand on her thigh. “Will you give a chance?” he asked squeezing lightly with each word.

Kari looked down at his hand as she blew out a sharp breath. “This is all just fucking crazy,” she finally said as she rubbed her hands against her face, groaning as   
she added. “This is all the opposite of everything I should be doing?”

“Who told you that?” Tig asked quickly.

“Well, I mean my life, family, job. This isn’t exactly in the manual,” Kari remarked. 

“What do you say without all of that influence?”

“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “There’s always been someone else’s plan for me, since the first-grade spelling bee,” Kari added bitterly.

Tig didn’t say anything as Kari’s mind dumped her in a rabbit hole of remembering every structured part of her life and how she was moved through the world like a fucking chess piece.

Kari felt her breath catch as Tig smoothed his hand higher up the front of her thigh, aching to have her bare skin under his palm. 

Tig kept his expression neutral as Kari lightly traced small circles on the top of his hand, frowning as she shook her head and shoved her angry resentment back into its gilded cage.

“Hey,” Tig murmured until Kari glanced over and met his eyes before he had to reluctantly return his attention to the road in front of them before he continued. “Tell me what you want, what you need.”

“I can’t tell you things like that,” she said.

“Why not?” Tig asked, in a harsher tone than he intended.

“Because I don’t know you,” Kari scoffed as though he should’ve known the answer.

“You can’t get to know me without talking to me,” he stated patiently, fighting the urge to take the next exit and find a private parking space until he could drag her   
to the back of the van and wetly fuck the answers out of her. 

“Do I want to get to know him?” Kari asked herself as Tig resumed his slow path up and down the top of her thigh. 

“What do you want?” she asked as she closed her hand around his, stopping his progress when he dipped closer to the apex of her thighs. 

“I want you,” Tig said easily, his brief glance made her want to squeeze her thighs together with the weight and naked intensity.

Kari cleared her throat and Tig caught her covering a smile as she whipped her head towards the passing world outside.

“What made you smile?”

Kari shook her head and rubbed the grit from the corner of her eyes. “I was thinking about those instant marriage reality tv shows, meeting at the altar and all of a   
sudden sharing a house. Not that this is completely comparably,” she added with a dry cough. 

“We’ll be sharing a house soon and we just met,” Tig countered.

Kari wanted to argue but struggled for an initial rebuttal and stared down at his hand as he shook off her hold and captured her left hand, squeezing urgently as he added. “Just say yes.”


	10. Sticky Sweet Promises

“Just say yes,” Tig repeated, urgently tightening his large hand around hers. 

As Kari pressed her lips together, not trusting her voice to immediately speak, back in Charming, Agent June Stahl nearly threw her phone against the wall when she got a call that the ATF issued Yukon was found discarded hours north, traces of blood were sent to the lab to determine whose it was. 

She picked up Tig’s most recent mug shot and shoved a white plastic topped push pin through his forehead into the bulletin board in her hotel room turned temporary office, the mini bar was a plus over Hale’s office. 

As June opened the mini bar and selected a five-dollar bag of chocolate coated candies and tiny bottle of vodka, back in the fast-moving van, Tig held his breath as Kari’s mind began assaulting her with the accusations that were ever levied at her by former lovers. 

“Cold.”

“Would being spontaneous fucking kill you?”

“Frigid.”

“Uptight.”

“Do you ever smile?”

Kari was brought back to the present as Tig squeezed her hand again. “Hey, you okay?”

She blinked and nodded, “yes and yes.” 

Tig looked over, “yes?” 

He both hated and was frightened by the tremor in his voice, realizing every time he looked at Kari or even heard her intake of breath, that she was not a woman he was used to being around, he didn’t know how to navigate around her.

Kari nodded. “Yes I’m okay and yes to more.”

“Yeah?” Tig asked, trying to keep from looking and sounding flustered.

Kari nodded again and pretended to brush inviable lint off her pants when even his brief glances carried too much intensity, the weight crushing her if she made eye contact.

Tig let her off the hook for the moment, letting his mind put together scenario after scenario of how he wanted their first night at the safe house to be. 

Kari adjusted the seat to further recline and brushed her arms briskly at the chill in the air. 

“Here,” Tig said and pulled his patched vest from behind the seat and passed it to her. 

“Thanks,” she murmured as she adjusted the heavy leather vest over her legs. Kari traced her fingertip around the different patches and worn edges of the stitched lettering. She reached into the pocket and closed her hand around his wallet.

Tig barely suppressed a startled flinch when her voice broke the silence. 

“Alexander.”

He looked over and saw Kari looking through his wallet and reading off his driver’s license.

“Alexander,” she repeated and mumbled as she looked through the rest of his wallet. He felt a hot coil tighten through his groin at the sound of his name on her lips. 

She slipped his wallet away and at some point, Kari’s shock, anxiety, and overall shaken psyche pushed her into an uneasy sleep, the highway recently repaved kept the ride smooth.

Your tax dollars at work.

Tig glanced over as her stomach loudly growled and she moaned as a frown creased her forehead. 

He realized how long it had been since either of them had eaten and it was starting to be way too long since he’d last ingested alcohol. 

Tig slowed as a string of cars lined up at a red light. Kari stirred awake when he had to stop the van short before hitting the Audi in front of them with broken brake lights.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked as Kari covered her mouth when she was struck by a series of yawns. 

She nodded and rubbed her eyes as Tig fished the almost empty pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He glanced over and held out the pack to her. “There’s only one left,” Kari said as she looked at his extended hand.

Tig shrugged, “it’s okay, I’ve got to stop soon for gas and pick up a few other things.”

Kari nodded her thanks as he lit the last cigarette in the pack and rolled down her a window to blow out her first exhaled cloud of smoke. 

Traffic was snarled at the four-way stop as Kari looked over at Tig as he was paying attention to the no tail lights Audi. She shifted on the seat as she ran her eyes over his strong hands and scarred knuckles from where he gripped the wheel. 

She inhaled an acrid lungful of the chemical saturated tobacco and unclicked her seatbelt, leaning towards him. Tig looked over at the metallic sound and was caught off guard when she pressed her lips to his and let her exhale move past his lips. 

Tig ignored the sharp honks from the driver behind him as he swallowed her smoke-filled exhale and breath as he slid a large hand to cradle the back of her skull, the silken strands of her hair snagging on his ragged cuticles and heavy rings. 

He broke the kiss before his lips pulled into a smile as his eyes glazed over as every fiber of his being deep dove into wanting to touch, taste, and fuck her. 

An involuntary blush touched Kari’s cheeks and she sat back in her seat, securing her seatbelt back in place. Tig moved the van forward and eventually through the stop sign, anxious to get through the gas station and to the safe house for club members needing to go underground in a hurry. 

The gas station was a few miles past the four-way stop. When the bright red sign came into view he asked her to climb into the back in case there was any facial recognition camera surveillance before slipping on a plain grey baseball cap. 

He stopped the van at the furthest pump from the entrance and looked over his shoulder at her as she sat on the bare metal van floor. 

“What?” Kari finally asked nervously as Tig tried to choose his words carefully. 

“I’m going to need to go in there to get there to pick up a few things after I full up the tank. Can I trust that you’ll stay put or do I need to encourage that?”

“I’ll stay right here,” Kari breathed.

Tig held her unblinking gaze for a few wordless heartbeats before nodding slowly and slipping out of the van. He went inside the convenient market attached to the gas station and paid cash for what he guessed would be a full tank as well as an assorted mix of sodas, booze and as close to real food the place sold. 

He added a bottle of bourbon that was stashed behind the counter. Tig’s eyes wandered over the impulse buys at the register and plucked something silly that he tucked in his pocket before he returned to the van, he would never have admitted aloud how relieved he was to see Kari waiting. 

Tig passed her back the plastic bags and asked her to stay in the back on the way to the nearby safe house.

Kari nodded as she met his eyes in the rearview mirror before digging in the bags for a bottled iced tea. 

The rest of the drive was mostly a straight shot to the cookie cutter condo complex, an older set of units with peeling grey paint and who’d never heard of a homeowner’s association.

Tig gathered up most of the bags and told Kari where Clay said the key to the front door would be hidden. It was under the potted white geranium and she opened the squeaky door, locking the deadbolt behind them.

Kari dropped the zippered duffle bag on a recliner in the sparsely furnished one-bedroom condo and looked around as Tig got right to the bottle of booze and took a few harsh, burning swallows, the alcohol spread warmth throughout his chest and belly, soothing his erratic nervous system, his lust hyperactive.

“There wasn’t anything in the way of clothing except this,” Tig mumbled when Kari rejoined him in the small dining room where he pointed at an I Love California tourist shirt. He picked out an XXL so she could wear it to bed.

Kari nodded her thanks and accepted the bottle he held towards, taking a few sips before digging a bag of sour cream and onion chips from the bag and a lemon lime soda. “Do you mind if I put the news on for a while?”

“Sure, I’ve got to make a call.”

Tig watched her walk to the faded burgundy loveseat and fumble with the remote until the right combo turned on the channel guide and she could land on a local news station. 

Tig dialed Clay and watched Kari tear open the bag of chips, not realizing that Clay had answered until he repeated himself for the third time.

“Tig?!?”

“Yeah, yes, I got to the house.”

“You or ‘both’ of you?”

“Both of us.”

“Is it going to stay both of you or do I need to have someone standing by to fucking clean up?”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Tig murmured and drank deeply from the bottle, finally feeling the alcohol begin to relax him.

Tig listened as Clay filled him in on the ATF’s presence in Charming and recent round of interrogations before ending the call.

He yanked his boots free and tossed them under the square dining room table before joining her in front of the tv. “Can I join you?” he asked, and Kari nodded, curling her legs under her so he could sit on the broken-down cushion. 

Tig waited until the news went to a commercial about a new show starting up on the animated network before he slipped his hand in his front pants pocket.

“I picked you up something else at the store,” Tig said casually.

“What is it?” she asked, instantly at peak curiosity. 

“Close your eyes,” he murmured.

Tig heard Kari’s sharp inhale and saw her pause in hesitation. “Please.”

Kari closed her eyes and felt her chest tighten as she heard the crinkling of a plastic wrapper. 

Behind her closed eyes, Tig unwrapped the cherry flavored candy ring that had been sitting by the convenience store register next to penis shaped lighters and miniature bottles of Wild Turkey. 

Kari’s eyes flew open as Tig closed his hand around her wrist and slid the sweet treat onto her left ring finger. She watched in what seemed like slow-motion as he pressed his lips over the jewelry shaped cherry candy. 

Tig dropped his hands to her narrow waist and yanked her underneath him, her gasp only adding napalm to his fiery wants and near-painful physical needs. 

“What are you afraid of?” Tig growled as he roughly yanked her linen pants down past her hips, the fabric smoothing down her thighs. “Talk to me,” he demanded as he tugged the pants free past her feet and tossed them to the floor before he smoothed a large hand up the inside of her warm thigh, feeling the supple muscle practically vibrating under his rough palm. 

Kari couldn’t help but laugh at the same time involuntary tears stung her eyes. “I’m afraid you might change your mind and hurt me, kill me,” she finally admitted.

Tig’s expression softened, “no, it’s okay,” he murmured as he started to tug her panties free. “Lemme show you,” he whispered raggedly and slid down the length of her body, pushing her thighs apart until he could lick a hot path up the inside of her thigh.

He teased his tongue over the prominence of her femoral artery, a light blue line towards her wet center. 

A shudder ran the length of Kari’s body as Tig pressed his lips to the soft skin under her belly button and shifted his grip until he could dip his tongue along the shell pink folds of her pussy. 

“I’m not going to ever hurt you,” he rasped before he traced the tip of his tongue in irregular circles around her clit, coaxing it to a more and more sensitive state under his touch. His cock strained behind his zipper, asphyxiating itself with its painful hardness. 

Tig stifled a moan as he reached a hand down to free his rigidity before the blood supply to his cock was choked to death.

He increased his tongue’s movement, eager to make her come, wanting her to surrender to his touch. 

Kari felt an electrical charge swirl in her pelvis as her thighs began to shake, her pleasure quaked inside, arching her back as his touch pushed her into any orgasmic abyss.

Tig sat up between her thighs as Kari tried to catch her breath, a warm glow and light sheen of sweat sprouted across her bare skin. He pulled her thighs tight to either side of his waist and dropped a hand to grasp onto his thick hardness, squeezing the shaft as he traced the sensitive head up and down her wet slit.

“Yes?” Tig asked on a pant, his lips wet with the rush of wetness he brought on as he fucked her tight, wet center with his tongue. 

“Yes,” Kari gasped breathlessly and raised her hands to slip under his shirt and tighten her fingers in his bare sides, careful to avoid his sore ribs.

Tig lowered himself to his elbows as he slid his thick rigidity inside her until he was stopped by their intimate flesh kissing. 

He groaned as he dropped his head to the curve of her neck, pressing his lips against her flushed skin. 

“I’m not sure this is going to last very long,” Tig admitted with an embarrassed chuckle as he plunged inside her, deeply and erratically.

Kari’s intimate internal walls tightened around his thrusting cock as her still sensitive clit twinged each time he filled her. 

Tig lifted his head when he felt Kari smooth her hands from his sides to slide one hand up to rest over his rapidly pounding heart as she pressed the fingertips of her left hand over his mouth. 

Tig felt the imminence of his own knee-shaking orgasm and snaked a hand up to close viperlike around her small left wrist. He pressed his lips to her palm, his ragged exhale hot against her skin as beads of sweat blossomed on his face. 

Kari watched him lick a wet pattern around the sweet cherry candy until his saliva and tongue turned red. Tig crushed his sticky lips to hers as he spilled himself in three hot spurts deep inside her. 

“How long does it normally take for couples to say they love each other on your fast marriage shows?” Tig asked as his heart pounded in its opaque pericardial sac and he immersed himself into the well of her wide eyes as his question fell over her.


	11. Home is a Fusion Reactor

Kari couldn’t find his words as Tig stayed buried inside her, stretching her femininity around his thick rigidity as he slowly softened and slid out of her wet center. 

“Is there any love at first sight?” Tig whispered and dropped his face to the warm curve of her neck, his question a hot exhale against her flushed skin. 

“It varies,” she murmured breathlessly as he shifted and physically moved her around so they could both lay together on the small sofa. Tig molded himself against her as she chuckled and gave word to her thoughts.

“The show follows a different kind of formula,” Kari added, imagining how this kind of scenario would play out on tv, it would be an actual true-crime reality show.

The excessive stress, anxiety and too much time on the road, caught up to both of them in its own way. Sleep dragged them both into a dreamless state for a couple hours, Kari stirring awake first as her bladder protested the need to be immediately emptied.

She groaned as her body protested sitting up after being squeezed up tight in his possessive hold. 

“Hey,” Tig muttered sleepily and snaked out his hand to grab her wrist and tug her back to the surface of the sofa.

“Hmmm?” she asked as he rubbed grit out of the corner of his eyes with his free hand. “On your shows, do people fall in love immediately or at least know they are on the path there?”

Kari lifted her free hand and traced her fingertips along his jaw before lowering his face and pressing her lips to his. “Yes,” she whispered before heading to the small bathroom. 

Tig rolled over onto his back as Kari relieved her bladder before she pissed herself and took a few minutes to casually clean up and wash her face.

Tig’s burner phone rang from the depths of his pocket and on the other end Clay told him some of the club member’s in the area would be stopping by with a welcome wagon basket with some guns, booze, and pharmaceuticals to pass the time. 

In the time before the club members arrived, back in Charming, Agent Stahl was being pressured from several supervisors about the location of their missing agent, a body at this point would’ve been a plus for Stahl. She knew the agency was beginning to tire of these missions she led and the rising body count from her fuckups.

Before the other club members showed up at their temporary residence, Tig let Kari explore the place and move things around, letting her have space with her thoughts. 

He spent some time talking to a guy that Clay told him about for new identifications and passports if needed. 

Kari looked out the front window as the roar of several approaching motorcycles sounded over the game show she had on the tv. She looked over at Tig who slipped into his patched vest and met her eyes, reading still present fear.

He walked over and gathered her up in his arms. “Wait here, I won’t be gone long.”

Kari nodded and watched Tig out the window as he began shaking hands and laughing with a group of hard looking men. 

She switched the station to a daytime talk show and looked through the condo’s hallway closet and found a broom, mop, and dustpan. 

Tig wrapped up his visit with the allied club and made his way back to the condo. The quintet of arguing women around the oval table had a popular musical guest playing their new catchy, bubble gum song. 

He closed the door and peeked into the kitchen as Kari danced a tango with the mop, singing along in an incredibly off-key voice. She looked up and found his eyes on her, squealing and dropping the mop to clatter on the linoleum. 

“You’re mopping,” Tig said stupidly.

Kari smiled as she dipped her head and brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “Government employees are just like everyone else too,” she said with a curtsy as she blushed with embarrassment. 

Tig’s expression turned feral and his eyes glowed brighter as he walked towards her, dropping his hands to unbuckle his jeans. “The other ones might be, but you’re not like anyone else,” he growled and settled his hands on her hips, squeezing the supple flesh until he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the dining room table, pushing the store bags out of the way as he dropped her on the table and pulled at her pants, adding as he had the fabric jerked down past her knees. “I don’t know what you are exactly, but I’ll do anything to never have you far from my side until I die,” Tig rasped before yanking his cock free, finding himself growing so hard it hurt.

“I’ll do anything,” he growled as he roughly pushed his cock past her shell pink intimate folds and plunged his thick rigidity inside her. “Anything,” Tig groaned as Kari tightened her thighs around his waist, the movement making the inner walls of her intimacy squeeze and massage his cock as though her body was trying to milk him dry.

Tig let himself be carried forward into the unknown as he felt acceptance within Kari’s arms and buried inside her hot, wet center while Kari let herself be swept away within the promises of his love.

They each began a new life together as their bodies remained glued together, their breath as one.


End file.
